The Girl Who Died
ith midnight fast approaching and most of Phoenix sound asleep, a girl of not-quite-thirteen was just waking up. She was battered, bruised and bandaged, lying in a hospital bed, utterly alone — no family or friends beside her.
Slowly stirring from what felt like a long but restless slumber, the cudgeled child parted her eyelids a sliver, revealing two glints of bright sky blue amid thick, dark lashes. For a long while, she just stared at the ceiling, thinking of nothing . . . then a woman’s voice began to register, sounding thin and tinny, as though issuing from an empty box . . .
“. . . rushed to a nearby hospital, in critical condition. Earlier, I spoke with the cemetery’s caretaker, who was first on the scene and floored by what he found.”
“Sheer devastation!” said a man, whose voice had the same hollow timbre as the woman’s. “Bodies everywhere! At first I thought to myself: well, it’s a good thing none of these folks was alive to begin with . . . but then I looked down inside the smoking pit, and — lo and behold! — there really was someone alive in there — the last place you’d ever expect. It was a miracle — a real miracle.”
The girl’s head was pounding. It felt like her brain was trying to expand to twice the size of what her skull would allow. In fact, every inch of her body seemed to be in some degree of pain — from the top of her throbbing head, to the soles of her cold bare feet.
Keeping her eyes shut tight, she began to imagine a scene: she was flying, soaring with glee through a vast expanse of clear blue sky . . . the bright sun warmed her face, and a wonderful feeling of cool air whipped through her hair. This was a familiar flight of fancy — the place to which her mind always went, anytime she wished to be somewhere other than where she was. As she flew in high imaginary circles, the voices in the room seemed barely audible . . .
“Authorities are still not speculating on the cause of the blast. Cemetery officials are eager for the police to wrap up their investigation, expecting the cleanup to last all night — a very long night, as one put it, followed by a very long morning of grim and awkward phone calls. Reporting live from Scottsdale, I’m Jean Adair, 3TV News.”
Another woman’s voice took over as the girl climbed higher and higher in her mind . . .
“And we’ll be bringing you more on this breaking story as information becomes available. Now, let’s turn to Roy Stone for a sneak peak at the weather. Looks like we’ve been seeing some pretty funny stuff in the skies tonight, Roy.”
“That’s right, Diane,” a man replied. “Reports of strange atmospheric anomalies have been coming in from all over the country — aurora displays as far south as Key West, and meteor showers over several major cities. In the past half hour, we’ve received over a dozen videos of some very remarkable light shows right here in our area. Here’s a clip from a viewer in Fountain Hills — pretty amazing stuff.”
“Wow! That is amazing,” Diane chimed in.
“Yes, indeed,” said Roy. “People seem to be celebrating the Fourth of July early — Independence Day is not for another two weeks, folks! But I can promise sunny days along the way. Stay tuned, and I’ll have more viewer videos and my complete seven-day forecast, after the break.”
The girl’s face twitched as a sudden burst of jingly music rattled her eardrums, along with some excited chatter from an excessively cheery woman.
“Summer’s officially here, and we’ve got all the latest styles! This week, all tanks and tees are up to 50% off!”
The abrupt clamor was enough to dispel the girl’s flight of fancy, and her head — no longer in the clouds — once again began to throb. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she rubbed her aching brow and tried to sit upright. At once a light tugging on her shoulder alerted her to a curious bunch of cords and tubes connected to various parts of her body — one ran from her finger, another from her arm, one even seemed to be shoved up her nose.
“Ugh,” she moaned, propping herself up on her elbows.
“What the — ? Oh! Wow, you — you’re awake?”
A man hurried over to her bedside. His eyes were wide with a look of concerned surprise, though it was hard to tell what the rest of his face was doing, as his mouth and nose were both covered with a pale blue mask. The girl looked at him curiously for a moment — but then something even more curious caught her eye: a strange sort of picture in a plain black frame, mounted high in a corner of the stark little room where she lay. The picture moved, as pictures do, but it was quite unlike anything the girl had ever seen — quickly jumping from place to place and spouting an endless cacophony of chatter and music, evidently the source of all the sounds she’d been hearing.
After a brief eternity of staring bleary-eyed at the mesmerizing picture, the girl managed to pull her eyes away and focus them as best she could on the person standing next to her. He was short and pudgy, with merry but very tired-looking eyes. He wore a plain, loose-fitting teal blue outfit and held a white clipboard with several papers attached.
“Well, if it isn’t our little miracle girl, pulling off another miracle!” he said, with smiling eyes, his mouth still hidden behind the mask. “You must have some real magic in you, little lady, to be sitting up now, after all you’ve been through. I’d better page the doc.” For a moment, he fiddled with a tiny device in his hand, then he pushed a few buttons on another device next to the bed, which seemed to be bleeping and blooping at random.
“I’m Norton, by the way — the night nurse,” said the man, scrawling his name in red ink on a little white board on the far wall. “And you should know, Miss Doe, that you’re the star of the E.R. tonight — the big to-do of the I.C.U. — Everyone’s been asking me: Hey, Norton, what’s the story with your little miracle girl?”
“Miss — Doe?” the girl repeated weakly. Then her eyes widened in shock as a sudden realization hit her like a sack of Gobstones.
“Oh! Don’t worry,” Nurse Norton said reassuringly, evidently noticing her distress. “Jane Doe — that’s just what we call all the unknown females who get brought in before we get a chance to learn your real names. And speaking of —” He held up the clipboard. “What is your real name? I need to enter it into the system.”
Scrunching her brow, the girl thought about the question. It was so simple, so basic, yet she had no answer. She thought as hard as she could, but nothing came — no name, no memories, no anything. It felt as though, somehow, she had just popped into existence, right then and there — knowing basic English, apparently, but not much else.
“I —” she said, then faltered. She shook her aching head, feeling lost and uncertain, still trying to make sense of it all. She wanted more than anything to retreat back into her head again, to fly off once more into her imaginary sky. Racking her broken brain for answers, she felt like she had to tell the man something, but the truth was just too elusive. So instead, she just ran through what little memory she had and repeated the last name she could remember hearing.
Reporting live from Scottsdale . . .
“I’m Jina Dare,” she said, feeling strangely confident as she told what was, quite obviously, a bald-faced lie.
“Oh! Like the spunky little reporter on 3TV?” Nurse Norton asked, and the girl now known as Jina Dare grimaced.
“Uh, no, not exactly.” She felt her brow knit again as she searched her empty head for more detail. “I mean — mine is — um — it’s spelled differently.”
“Ah, I see. So how do you spell your name then?”
Jina bit her lip and tried to mask her sudden guilt over how readily she found herself telling lies. She — of course — had no idea who the spunky little reporter on 3TV even was, much less how she spelled her name. A thought crossed her mind to just tell the truth, but instead her instincts compelled her to double-down on the lie.
“Um, mine’s like: J-I-N-A.”
Nurse Norton scribbled it down on the clipboard.
“J-I-N-A — O.K. And your last name?” he asked.
“Oh — uh, it’s D-A-R-E,” said Jina.
“Oooh, how exciting!” said Norton, giving her a wink.
Jina made a meager smile, feeling oddly relieved at having successfully misspelled the spunky little reporter’s name. Perhaps it wasn’t so bad to tell just one or two minor fibs — indeed, she rather liked the sound of her new name. And it wasn’t like she was a criminal or anything, just from telling one tiny little lie.
Only . . . it really wasn’t so tiny, now was it? Giving a false name to a grown-up was actually a pretty big deal. And who else but criminals ever even used made-up names?
Lost in thought, Jina absentmindedly stroked a lock of her hair — a long white streak that was shockingly bright amongst all the black, like a bolt of lightning in a dark night sky. It was a curious feature that she somehow failed to notice, with her mind set on other things . . . until another curious feature came into view, one she couldn’t help but to notice.
A peculiar pair of people had appeared in the room — appeared so suddenly and silently Jina thought for a moment they’d just popped up through the floor.
The first was a man wearing an emerald green cloak and a large pointed hat to match. His frizzled graying ginger hair was several feet long, as was his frizzled graying ginger beard, which was held together along its length with a number of brass rings. He had a narrow face with high cheeks, a long thin nose, and twinkling green eyes that matched the color of his cloak and hat. Although he didn’t seem exceptionally old, he had a pleasant sort of grandfatherly look about him.
His companion was a woman, and she did look old — very, very old, judging by the deep wrinkles that lined her wizened face and two thick braids of silver hair that hung all the way down to her knees. Her amber eyes seemed to teem with compassion, benevolence and ancient wisdom. She wore flowing white embroidered robes and held a long, crooked staff adorned with feathers and beads. Although rather funny to behold at first blush, both she and the man seemed to radiate an aura of great power and authority. Jina’s initial instinct to giggle at the sight of them had left her as soon as it had come, which she guessed was probably a very good thing. Nurse Norton, on the other hand, looked quite shocked and was less able to contain himself.
“What the — ? Oh — uh, I mean — Hello! I’m sorry, are you family?”
“Of a sort,” said the woman, giving Nurse Norton an odd sort of wave.
“Please, if you would be so kind as to wait out in the hall,” said the man. “There are several important things we wish to discuss . . . in private.”
“Oh! Okay. Sure, no problem,” said Norton, with a friendly though somewhat dazed look in his eyes. “Here is your umbrella,” he said to the man, handing him the clipboard, then he stepped out of the room, whistling a merry tune through his pale blue mask.
The strange man put on a pair of pinch-nose reading glasses and began to peruse the information on the clipboard.
“It seems you’ve had quite an adventure this evening, Miss, ah . . .” he adjusted his spectacles and squinted at the clipboard, “Miss Dare, is it?” He glanced up at her with a glint in his eye. “Indeed.”
The man peered at Jina over the round lenses of his pinch-nose spectacles and studied her for a moment. The intensity of his gaze made her feel a bit uncomfortable, and she shivered a little at the eerie feeling it gave her.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked.
“Um,” said Jina, considering the question, although she doubted any recollection of the man would surface in her mind, and none did. “No, sorry. Should I?”
The old woman looked curious and concerned, but she said nothing, and the man only smiled.
“My name is Marley Rusthorne,” he said warmly, “and my esteemed companion here,” he made a courteous gesture toward the old woman, “is a dear friend and colleague of mine: Professor Winona Whitewolf.”
Jina thought Winona Whitewolf looked more like a mystic than a schoolteacher, and she wondered what kind of subjects the old woman must teach.
“We are here to help,” Rusthorne continued, examining a bag of clear liquid that hung from a pole next to the bed. “And I must say, it’s a very good thing we found you here, as you appear to be needing quite a bit more help than your current caretakers are able to provide.” With a thin index finger, he poked the bag of liquid, which Jina now noticed fed down through a tube sticking into her right arm. “Please tell me, Miss Dare: what do you remember about the events prior to your arrival here, at this hospital, in this condition?”
Jina took a moment to think, once more unconsciously stroking the white streak in her hair, and once more failing to notice its existence. She really had no idea how she had wound up in this place, or how she had come to be in her current unfortunate state. She sought again for any shred of memory she could muster, drawing yet again another frustrating blank.
The strangers before her appeared to be a knowledgeable sort; Rusthorne in particular seemed to know things about her that she herself did not know, and that made her feel rather vulnerable. Still, neither he nor Whitewolf seemed threatening — quite the contrary — like Nurse Norton, it seemed they were there to help, and every bit of Jina’s intuition told her they were trustworthy, despite their odd appearance. So perhaps this was as good a time as any for her to come clean.
“Well, that’s just it,” she began. “I — I don’t remember anything — nothing at all. I honestly don’t remember anything that happened to me before I woke up in this room just now.” She gulped at the thought. “And not just from today, I mean, but like . . . ever . . . my whole entire life.”
Rusthorne and Whitewolf exchanged a sideways glance.
Jina scrunched up her face and began to rub her aching forehead again, feeling vexed and perplexed.
“I think I must have hit my head or something. I . . . ugh.”
The pain in her head increased as she racked her brain for words, for memories, for answers to the myriad questions that were just now beginning to bubble to the surface.
“I couldn’t even remember my own name when Nurse Norton — he asked me just now. And I felt stupid for not knowing, so I just went with the first one I could think of. I just repeated a name I’d heard a second before from the — from, uh — you know, that thing there.”
Irritated by her inexplicable lack of knowledge, she pointed at the picture on the far wall.
“What’s that thing called? Shouldn’t I know that?”
“Not necessarily,” said Whitewolf with assurance.
“I believe it’s called a helivision,” said Rusthorne. “Or is it a telecopter? I always get those two mixed up.”
“We don’t have them in our world, you see,” said Whitewolf.
Something stirred in the far reaches of Jina’s brain.
“Um — sorry, but — what do you mean by ‘your world’?” she asked.
“Our world,” said Rusthorne, gesturing to include both Whitewolf and Jina, as well as himself, “is quite different from what you see here. All that surrounds us now — this room, this building, this city, virtually every manmade structure on this planet — is not part of our world. This, my dear Miss Dare, is the world of Muggles.”
“Muggles,” Jina repeated the word, conjuring up all sorts of curious beings in her mind’s eye. “What are they?”
Rusthorne chuckled. “Not what, but who,” he clarified. “Muggles — more commonly known as No-Majs, although I rather prefer the more traditional term — are people, like you and me. They’re really no different from us in any way that truly matters — alas, however, it is not our similarities but our differences that we, as humans, all tend to focus on. And, as is so often the case in human relations, the primary thing we do not have in common is also the thing that most drives us apart.
“For centuries, we’ve chosen to withdraw from No-Maj society — that is, Muggle society — to the point that we do now seem to live in two distinct, separate worlds, although in truth we really share just the one. We take steps to hide ourselves and things like us away from the Muggles, and, because of this, they remain generally unaware of a great many things.”
He paused to examine a device on a rolling cart next to the bed. The machine, which beeped every minute or so, also seemed to be connected to Jina via tube.
“This works both ways however, for Muggles are a very clever and resourceful bunch — on the whole, far more clever and resourceful than our kind, if you ask me. And through their cleverness and their resourcefulness, they have brought into their world many ingenious things that we do not have in ours, such as telecopters and helivisions — oh, and cellulite heliphones, how I wish we had something like those in our world!”
For a few moments, he held a wistful, faraway look.
“Truly, without a doubt, most certainly and for sure, Muggles have advanced themselves in leaps and bounds over the last few centuries. And they do today have many fine things in their corners of the world that we do not have in ours.”
He eyed Jina over his pinch-nose spectacles with a rather peculiar smile.
“Ah, but we, on the other hand, do have one thing — one very special thing, I should say — that Muggles do not — a thing that gives us a bit of an edge in many ways. Take the art of healing, for instance.”
Rusthorne’s smile faded into a look of sympathy. “I’m afraid I very much doubt that your Muggle caretakers have managed to alleviate much of your discomfort this evening, am I right, Miss Dare?”
Jina grunted. She’d been distracted from her discomfort for a few magical moments during Rusthorne’s speech. Now that she was reminded of it however, the pain once again reared its ugly head, as if to answer the question for her.
“Sadly,” Rusthorne continued, “Muggles have always struggled mightily when it comes to healing — fixing what is broken and keeping people healthy and in one piece.” He turned to the old woman. “Winona, would you please work your magic for this poor suffering young lady?”
Professor Whitewolf nodded and stood over Jina, her expression grave but benign, and she placed a warm hand over Jina’s heart. Her eyelids closed partway and started to flutter, and she began murmuring under her breath — soft vocalizations that sounded almost like a song.
To Jina’s amazement, her pain began to dissipate almost at once! Most of her visible cuts, scrapes and bruises just cleared right up in a matter of seconds, and those that remained lightened up to little more than a few faint red marks.
“What’s she doing?” Jina asked Rusthorne in a whisper. The thought of asking Whitewolf seemed somehow inappropriate, since she was busy doing . . . whatever it was she was doing.
“Hmm, I thought I’d mentioned that already,” Rusthorne said, winking.
“You mean,” said Jina, glancing up at Whitewolf in astonishment, then looking back at Rusthorne. “You mean she — she’s doing magic? Real magic?”
“So it would appear. Are you feeling any better?”
Jina couldn’t believe it. She was feeling better and better with every passing second.
“Yes! Wow! My head — it’s stopped pounding. It feels . . . kind of tingly.”
Rusthorne chuckled. Jina’s head wasn’t just tingling, it was swimming with thoughts and questions, all swirling around in her mind like ingredients in a freshly-stirred cauldron.
“So, then, does this mean — can you do magic too?” she asked Rusthorne, and the corners of Whitewolf’s lips curled upward a fraction.
“I can,” he replied. “Although I am nowhere near so practiced in the fine art of healing as Professor Whitewolf.”
The old woman’s utterances trailed off, and she lifted her hand off Jina’s chest, which now felt very warm, like she was cozying up next to a roaring fireplace on a cold winter’s night.
“And how do you feel now?” Whitewolf asked, with a voice every bit as warm as her healing hands.
Jina felt great, and she told Whitewolf so. Rusthorne smiled behind his frizzled ginger beard and looked at his watch, which had just one hand and seven or so tiny pictograms instead of twelve numbers.
“Well, I’m afraid time is of the essence, and we really must be going now.”
“But —” said Jina. She’d barely had a chance to ask any of the dozens of questions that were now brewing inside her head.
“Where are you going?” she asked. “Can’t you stay just a little while longer? I thought . . .” A sudden wave of desperation swept over her. “Please stay! Just for a little while? I have so many questions!”
Whitewolf put a reassuring hand on Jina’s shoulder and chuckled softly. “There now, Miss Dare, just relax. You are coming with us, of course.”
She gave each of the tubes connected to Jina a light tap with her crooked finger; with every touch, it disconnected and slithered away like a snake.
“I believe these are yours,” said Rusthorne, as a pile of ragged black robes, all tattered, torn and covered in dust, drifted through the air toward Jina. Before reaching her, the robes spun quickly for a moment, and when they stopped they were completely clean and free of tears and holes. As the robes set themselves down, neatly folded, onto Jina’s lap, a pair of pointy black boots walked themselves over to the bedside and loosened their laces.
“Please dress quickly. Professor Whitewolf and I will be waiting out in the hall.”
When Rusthorne and Whitewolf had left the room, Jina pulled off the scrimpy pajama-like gown she’d been wearing, tore off the numerous bandages she no longer seemed to need, and proceeded to get changed. As she lifted the dark robes, an object tucked into the folds came falling out and landed on the bed next to her: a long silver chain with a small round pendant.
With piqued curiosity, she picked up the necklace and began to examine the pendant: a silver dragon, curled into a ring around a tiny crystal ball, strangely devouring its own tail. For a moment, Jina just sat in quiet stillness, admiring the little treasure. Knowing that Rusthorne and Whitewolf were in a hurry, however, she decided to hold off on inspecting it any further — there’d be plenty of time for that later.
Curious (and also a little nervous) about whatever was yet to come, she hung the necklace round her neck, donned the dark robes and the pointy black boots, and walked out through the doorway, into the great unknown.